According to the app's App Store listing, cited in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, it was last updated nearly five years ago and was available at the time the FOI request was received by Surrey Police (September 4).

The FOI request itself stated the app does not appear to work, is reviewed only twice as "rubbish" and a "waste of space", appears to have been last updated in December 2012 and is reported as incompatible with Apple's most recent operating system, iOS11.

A Surrey Police spokesman said: "The “Surrey Police Beat” smartphone app was developed in 2011 as one of a number of ‘Trailblazer’ initiatives funded by the Home Office to increase transparency in policing and criminal justice.

"The purpose of the Trailblazer initiative was for different police forces to trial different ways of enhancing the www.police.uk website. Under this programme Surrey Police developed a force-specific app. The app helped officers to see the benefit in using Twitter on the move, and the force in trusting them to use it, but it was decided, when Home Office funding came to an end, that we would rather focus our own resources on improving Surrey Police’s core web services, such as the website.

"Surrey Police terminated the contract with the app developer in August 2013. The app has been removed from the Google Play store but, despite requests to both the developer and Apple, we have been unable to get the app removed from the Apple iTunes store."